This month's Laundrette is somewhat generated (w00t!) using a silly
sed script. I don't think there are too many problems with this, and it has
certainly made compiling this easier.

One thing that every group of people I have had anything to do with has had
in common is a healthy collective sense of humour, and an appreciation for
the surreal. (I don't think I need to point out that the group of LG regulars
who have been mercilessly quoted here are no exception, but I guess I just
did).

[Dave Blackburn]
I appreciate your reply -- and so fast.

[Ben]
[grin] It happens sometimes, around here. Other times, nobody will say
anything until someone makes a comment a week down the road, and then -
oh, brother, take cover! We've been known to wander from rhubarb to US
history, taking a detour into European supermarkets and Cockney rhyming
slang along the way... but we usually get the question answered. Some
way or another.

Because the off-topic threads tend to spawn other off-topic
threads, I've changed the format a little. Hopefully this will work out
better, as trying to find a way to show the different reply levels has been
a headache.

This means that the 'wacko topics' aren't cleanly separated from the humourous
messages: though I probably could move them around, I think it gives a bit
more of an insight into how our (twisted) minds work. Whether or not that's
a good thing is best judged in hindsight.

It does mean that our in-jokes are a little more transparent to any
unsuspecting newcomer; we can just throw out a link, and all is explained.
That's pretty important to us, because here at LG, the party is open to all
comers (just bring your own beer).

(That said, I'm tempted to throw in something baffling: monkeys, toasters,
squid, school uniforms, tractors. A few of my co-workers should be in tears
of laughter by now :)

Links

Danny O'Brien has been writing a column called "To Evil!". If you haven't been
reading it, you should start: '"To Evil!"'s house rule #1 states that
corporations don't wreak evil; people wreak evil. Blaming Microsoft for doing
bad is a bit like smacking your aluminum siding whenever your housemates
steals some toast. No-one feels guilty, no-one gets blamed. You just hurt your
hand.'

Out of Memory

[Sluggo]http://lwn.net/Articles/104179/
Linux's overcommitting of memory compared to an airline flying with just
barely enough fuel for the average situation.

[Brad]
Hmmmmm.

I'd pay money to watch people get forcibly ejected from a plane ;)

[Ben]
For a closely-related demonstration, run "swapoff" on your machine and
fire up Gimp, Mozilla, and a kernel compile. Should make a nice 'whOOM'
sound. :)

[Sluggo]
It sounds like you've done this before.

[Ben]
Not me! It was, um, a friend.

[Thomas]
No -- you have that all wrong. Don't look at seeing how much RAM
processes waste, just try running KDE and keep adding more RAM until
it runs at a speed that is useable. :) [1]

[1] This is known as the OverLooking Other Memory.

[Ben]
Once you've satisfied KDE's memory requirements (and the truck from the
memory vendor's has left), everything else will run without a hitch -
even your infinite loops will compute in one-tenth their usual time.

[Heather]
I've got a 90Mb gimp file with um... a lot of layers, that just might do
it on its own. But if you really want to do damage, have moz surf some
javascript developer archives and explore the working examples. (Whether
they actually work is immaterial.) That oughta do it. K isn't required
to play this game.

But it kertainly helps...

Anti-Microsoft bias in classical Russian poetry

[Ben]
You woudn't think it could happen, but...

Someone on anekdot.ru (a Russian humor site) noted that "bez okon, bez
dverey" - a line from Pushkin's famous description of Baba Yaga's hut -
can be translated as "no Wind0ws, no Gates".

[Brad]
Creepy. I wonder if the author of that was a Russian cousin of Nostradamus...

Spam: Spam Jokes

A group was touring London, marveling at the historic buildings, art
collections, and such. The group included people from many countries. During
the tour of the Tower of London, a man from Prague and another man from
Athens struck up a conversation about some point in history.

A small disagreement ensued, which rapidly became a large one. They decided
to settle the matter then and there using the historical accouterments at
hand. Donning armor and chain mail, they prepared for a battle to the death.
This attracted the attention of the rest of the tour group, who crowded
around for a better look. Inasmuch as the combatants were in period dress,
the people couldn't tell one from another.

"Is that the Czech wearing the armor?" asked one tourist. "No," replied another,
"The Greek is in the armor. The Czech is in the mail."

I got a new car radio yesterday. It has voice recognition. You shout "soul"
and it plays a soul station. You shout "rock" and it finds rock and roll for
you. You shout "country" and it finds country music.

I was enjoying this new technology when some children ran in front of my car,
causing me to swerve at the last second. I yelled out: "F&**king kids!"

And my radio started playing Michael Jackson songs

"Send someone over quickly!" the old woman screamed into the phone. "Two
naked men are climbing towards my bedroom window!"

"This is the Fire Department, lady," the voice replied. "I'll have to
transfer you to the Police Department."

"No, it's YOU I want!" she yelled. "They need a longer ladder!"

The CIA had an opening for an assassin.

After all of the background checks, interviews, and testing were done there
were three finalists - two men and one woman. For the final test, the CIA
agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun.

"We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the
circumstances. Inside this room you will find your wife sitting in a chair.
You have to kill her." The first man said. "You can't be serious. I could
never shoot my wife." The agent replies, "Then you're not the right man for
this job."

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into
the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the agent came out with
tears in his eyes. "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent replies,
"You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home."

Finally, it was the woman's turn. Only she was told to kill her husband. She
took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one shot after another.
They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes,
all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman. She wiped the
sweat from her brow and said, "You guys didn't tell me the gun was loaded with
blanks. So I had to beat him to death with the chair."

A young blonde was on vacation in the depths of Louisiana. She wanted a pair
of genuine alligator shoes in the worst way, but was very reluctant to pay
the high prices the local vendors were asking.

After becoming very frustrated with the "no haggle" attitude of one of the
shopkeepers, the blonde shouted, "Maybe I'll just go out and catch my own
alligator so I can get a pair of shoes at a reasonable price!"

The shopkeeper said, "By all means, be my guest. Maybe you'll luck out and
catch yourself a big one!" Determined, the blonde turned and headed for the
swamps, set on catching herself an alligator.

Later in the day, the shopkeeper was driving home, when he spotted the young
woman standing waist deep in the water, shotgun in hand. Just then, he saw a
huge 9-foot alligator swimming quickly toward her. She took aim, killed the
creature, and with a great deal of effort hauled it on to the swamp bank.
Lying nearby were several more of the dead creatures. The shopkeeper watched
in amazement. Just then the blonde flipped the alligator on its back, and
frustrated, shouts out, "Damn it, this one isn't wearing any shoes either!"

Two blondes were going to Disneyland when they came to a fork in the road. The
sign read: "Disneyland Left."

So they went home.

Succinctly put...

[Brian]
...thus someone named Robert becomes the brother of my parent.

Netiquette

Thanks for spamming me along with everyone else you could think of. I'm
sure other people will treat your "request" with the same amount of
individual attention you've shown in making it.

I'll quote someone who's made the point more calmly, politely, and
pleasantly than I presently care to (full credit to Rick Moen. Well
said, sir.):

(You cross-posted your request for help to multiple newsgroups, or
mailing lists.)

I was going to help you, until I noticed your cross-post. Now, I'll
spend that time assisting someone else, who's not being a pain in the
ass.

A large and growing number of otherwise helpful people are ignoring you
in exactly this way. Watch and see. Unlike most, I'm taking the trouble
(through referring you to this text) to tell you what's going on.

I could advise you to avoid cross-posting because it's rude to the
on-line community, but saying that just conveys the message that the
Internet community rewards rudeness. No, I'm suggesting you should post
to a single forum at a time because you'll get more, better, quicker
answers -- because you won't be widely boycotted and ignored. Yes, it's
true that "other people do it". They're getting worse help and less
help. They just haven't yet figured it out.

Don't clean up your act to please me. Yes, I'd prefer that you avoid
acting clueless and rude on the Net, because I care about the Net, but
(like many others) can and will deal with the immediate problem by
disregarding your crossposted question.

For more on [1] Netiquette, see any of thousands of resources on the
Net.

[1] You can stop wondering; yes, the wordplay is intentional.

Laptop Juggling

[Kapil]
I would have said I would wait for the laptop that you give up on and
the retailers then sell at half price :-) --- but then I would also know
that it doesn't run Linux well, so that it wouldn't be worth a lot!

[Ben]
Nope. But you could wait until I find one that's hitting on all 12
cylinders, or at least runs smoothly, is fuel-efficient, and has nice
upholstery; I'll be reporting on every one I test. Hmm, maybe an
occasional article series...

That'll get me on their spam lists, they'll never darken my email
gateway again. Hmmm, this may bear considering at some future point.

The Crack Pipe

[Ben]
(Is it time for another hit on the crack-pipe yet? Oh, goody.)

[Vince]
You say your pipe is cracked?? A good friend of mine of the Lacota Nation
makes pipes that don't break <G> Made from stone... good pipe..

[Jimmy]
Reminds me of a Denis Leary riff, something like "Marijuana doesn't lead
to harder drugs -- it leads to DIY. Dude, we could make a great bong out
of your head".

I once read a magazine that had instructions for making a pipe out of
the ground :)

Spam: Spam cuteness

[Ben]
Well, now - here's an interesting one. In one of my "Perl One-Liner of
the Month" articles, I predicted that spammers would eventually catch on
to the hex-encoding method I'd used to obscure email addresses. Didn't
take long, did it?

The above flips to "http://209.12.114.139:87/sb/index.htm", which
resolves to some company based in Arizona. I've become so used to these
things coming out of China that it seems, well, weird to see this.
What's even more interesting is the port they're using (87): Mozilla is
smart enough that it pops up an "Access to this port has been disabled
for security reasons", but Dillo and w3m go right to chewing on the
thing (anybody want to make a bet on IE behavior for this?)

It's quite cute; if it wasn't for their stupid little trick with the
random text, it would look fairly real (there's a GIF of an
official-looking, "Smith Barney wants you to click this" note attached
to the original email.) It just ain't safe to be gullible these days.

Spam: Again, regarding your request. Please reply.

[Brian]

Corinne Vega wrote:
Hi again,
This is Corinne Vega. I am writing to you to confirm that we have
accepted your mortgage application.

How thoughtful to accept my application from your future, in my past.

Our office has confirmed that you can get a $220,000 loan for as low
as $352.00 per month payment.

Now, is the mortgage for Ben's boat that I'm taking out, or is it for
the newly beach-front property in Florida, or perhaps that holiday home
I just built on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens.

[Sluggo]
Yeah yeah yeah, I couldn't let Ben and his hurricanes have all the fun.

[Brian]
Ooooo, errr... Now, with
those payments, you haven't specified a loan rate, so lessee here. At 0%
interest, that's a 52 year loan. Lucky for you my family tends to live
into the three digits, or you'd be SOL sooner or later.

[Ben]
Why, Brian! You missed the salient factor, the very fact that makes this
The Offer Of The Century: since they've reversed the flow of time, as
you noted above, the interest is negative - that is, they pay you for
taking out the loan.

[Jason]
So it's sort of like how you pay for a meal at the restaurant at the
end of the universe?

[Ben]
In fact - the calculations are a bit difficult, but
bear with me - eh, carry the 9, divide by the prime rate on 10/29/29,
subtract the number of polar bears in Zimbabawe, raise to the power of
the tea index in China, drop the first seven digits... there we are.
You'll have it paid off in about 1.03453464557 microseconds, give or
take a century.

[Jason]
Well, yes, but that figure is useless unless you perform a simple test
to see if the lender is running a scam. Just fill out the application
forms, and then look to see if the DOB given is yesterday.

[Ben]
Best of all, you can borrow the money for the payments
from Corinne - the interest from that second loan will easily pay for
the first one, and leave you enough cash to start a loan company of your
own!

Now, that's what I call high finance. Must have required snorting
several grams of funny white powder and smoking a couple of pounds of
radioactive waste to come up with a "special offer" like that one...

[Brian]

The approval process takes no longer than a minute, so please fill
out the form on our website:

I'm sure that it's easier for you to just copy my data from the
application that I will fill out in the future and send back to you
somehow. Remit payment to the same swiss bank account that's been
flogged about in this mailing list recently. I'll find a way to get the
funds drawn from there, perhaps with the KIND ASSISTANCE OF ALL MY NEW
FREIEIENDS ON THE NIGERIAN INTERNET.

http://rygig.jlfbkmne.info/?dqLwLxdeNhkK.xdYXQVY

nice URL, did you pay much for it? I can sell you a better name, cheap!

Corinne Vega
First Account Manager

I'm not sure you're senior enough to represent your firm to this entire
list. Can we speak to a second account manager?

Sigh. Isn't there more to life?

[Ben]
All right, congratulations! Maybe you won't have to take Corinne up on
her offer after all.

[Brian]
Oh, yes, there is. I just got a new gig.
I'll be the Sysadmin at (nfr)(security), starting later this month. That
makes up for the fall on the stairs two weeks ago, and the little dog we
own that laid open my lip to the tune of 5 stitches last Thursday. Her
new name is FaceBiter.

[Ben]
OW! Gotta watch out for those little ratweilers. There's a tiny little
chihuahua-like critter over by my yoga studio that thinks it's bigger
and tougher than my motorcycle; just launches into the most
vicious-sounding, hysterical barking whenever it hears my engine. Even
revving to 10 grand doesn't discourage the damn thing (certainly drowns
it out, though. :) I might have to start carrying a water pistol.

Gouranga

[
I'm including this because it's bizarre
]

[NitaiGouranga]
Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

Wacko Topic: Guns & Crime

[Sluggo]
I was talking with an NRA fan last night, and he said guns were banned
in the UK only a few years ago, crime has increased fourfold since then,
and London now has a worse crime rate than New York City. Sounds far
fetched but could there be some truth in it?

[Pete Jewell]
Sounds like absolute rubbish to me. There has been gun controls in place as
long as I can remember - perhaps there wern't any at the beginning of the 20th
century. Not sure where your fan got their crime figures - were they talking
about a particular type of crime, or overall?

If anything there has been a tightening of gun laws over the last two decades,
especially after the tradegy in Hungerford.

[Neil]
Someone is severely twisting the facts to fit an argument here. We've had gun
controls for as long as I can remember and OK they were tightened beyond what
I would consider reasonable in the wake of the Hungerford shootings, but
we've never had anything like the American gun culture.

A fourfold increase in crime in a few years? Hey, you'd think I might have
noticed, living in Britain as I do. Certainly there's been an increase in gun
crime over the last couple of decades, but that hasn't been affected in any
way by the change in the law AFAICT. The apparent size of the increase in
relative terms is probably down to starting from a very low base at least in
comparison to the USA. In absolute terms, I believe we still have a very long
way to go to catch up with the US in terms of murders/shootings per head of
population (that statement made without checking any facts).

[Ben]
Interesting. I'd imagine the peak of this has passed, but does the above
take into account 30 years (or so) of IRA battles? I would think that
the figures for the UK would be quite high as compared to New York - or
any other part of the US.

Just to keep parity, I haven't checked any facts either. :)

[Neil]
30 years or so of IRA battles didn't really amount to a fraction of what you
seem to think. ISTR that statistically more people are killed on the roads in
a year than were killed in the whole of "the troubles".

[Ben]
OK; I did say that I hadn't checked. However, comparing murder stats to
car accident stats is anything but complimentary to the former; there
are a HUGE number of car-related deaths. The fact that no one is going
to do anything about them doesn't make the number low.

[Neil]
OK. I was just trying to put the whole IRA thing into some kind of
perspective. I have the possibly mistaken impression that most Americans
believe that Britain during the troubles was a dangerous place and that
London was far too dangerous to visit.

[Ben]
I'm not sure about "dangerous" on an absolute scale, WRT that
perception; more dangerous by some small measure, surely, but lots of
people continue to visit Israel - which is in the middle of a war. I
don't think London lost much in a way of tourism due to it; a quick look
at Net resources says that it grew pretty steadily, up to 5 mil last
year.

IMO, most Americans see London as a romantic and historically
fascinating place; I doubt that anyone who had the time, the interest,
and the money to travel there would seriously consider that sort of
"danger".

[Sluggo]
People have visions of bombs going off every day in Northern Ireland;
most people would not even consider visiting it. However, I've never
heard of anybody putting off travel to Britian because of the few
isolated bombings there.

[Neil]
I grew up in London during that period and there were occasional bombs, I even
missed a couple by an hour or two, but really it had little impact on the
mainland, except for a few unlucky people who were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. The effects in Northern Ireland were far nastier and more
pernicious, even if the actual number of deaths were low.

[Sluggo]
A lot of yanks viewed it in terms of British colonialism/imperialism;
that they were interfering in Ireland for their own advantage the way
they had meddled in our country. Of course, nobody stopped to ask what
exactly what the Crown would gain from such a policy; NI is not exactly
a financial powerhouse, nor does it export any goods not available
elsewhere. People viewed it as "having territory for bragging rights".
And of course, ppl couldn't really relate to terrorism before 9/11; it
was too abstract, too unimaginable.

[Jimmy]
A big part of the problem is that a lot of people in Ireland, North and
South, on both sides, have been fed a load of bullshit packaged as history.
I won't go into this in detail, because it's too tiring. I proofread part
of a very good (though more than slightly biased towards the British side)
account, written at the time that Irish Home Rule was being discussed, for
Distributed Proofreaders, which debunks several of the myths of Irish
"history". I'll send you a link when it's posted.

[Sluggo]
That's what I thought when I went to NI, but I left with a very
different impression, that it was a "made in Ireland" problem. I
visited Scotland and England immediately afterward and found the Brits,
rather than anxious about losing the territory and their prestige,
instead wishing the NI problem would just go away. As my friend in
Bristol (a British nationalist) put it, "I'd be happy to give Northern
Ireland independence today if it meant no more subsidies from our
treasury."

[Jimmy]
It's not really a made in Ireland problem, as such. There's a bit of the
same sentiment in Scotland.

[Sluggo]
Of course, these views would be obvious to anybody putting the Irish
and British newspapers side by side. However, most yanks have never
even gone into the foreign section of a newsstand, never heard the
BBC, etc.

[Ben]What foreign section of the newsstand? It's you tofu-eating,
tree-hugging, Prius-driving, Kerry-voting West Coast liberal types that
have access to such things; the rest of America gets the Fox News
version ("OK, there's a country called Russia. And maybe another one
called Iraq. We'll let you know, once a week, whether they're good or
bad.")

[Sluggo]
After the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent events, there was more
of an acceptance in America that there's two sides to the issue.
Nevertheless, I continue to see disurbing graffiti in pub bathrooms,
"IRA all the way" and the like.

Regarding the forefold increase, my NRA friend said it was Australia,
not Britian.

Dunno if they excluded political crimes from the crime statistics, but
I think they should have. Whether location X was bombed doesn't tell
me anything about whether a mugger is likely to stalk me, which is what
I want to know.

[Jimmy]
Just FYI: there has never been an incident of IRA sponsored gunfire in
Britain. It has always been explosives.

[Ben]
Interesting. I wonder what the rationale behind it was. More bang for
the buck, probably - and the evidence mostly destroys itself, which
isn't the case with firearms.

[Jimmy]
I had an argument on Wikipedia once, with someone who wanted to remove the
word "terrorist" (to be replaced with "freedom fighter") from any articles
relating to the IRA (one of the oddities of Wikipedia's Neutral POV policy
- since then, the article on the Provisional IRA has had a footnote added
which justifies the use of that word at great length - see
here).

Basically, the P-IRA wanted to flex its muscles at the British government,
but did not usually wish to harm "civilians" - they used to phone ahead,
using a codeword, and give advance warnings so civilians could be evacuated.

[Ben]
I did become curious about the above comparison, though. Seems that,
according to your own Telegraph, the number has at least doubled
recently.

[Neil]
Interesting. It seems worse than I thought, but that particular statistic
could be a bit of a freak. I'd be interested in whether the full year figures
have doubled.

[Jimmy]
A friend, who has studied both Irish Law (heavily based on British Common Law,
even more so than American law) and History & Politics, tells me that British
law was changed in the past few years with regard to the reporting of crime --
if I were to report something stolen, for example, and then discover it had
merely been misplaced, it would still be reported as a crime -- so that even
minor crimes, even those that are not crimes, are reported as incridents of
crime. With this in mind, it's not surprising that crime in Britain seems to
be on the rise.

[Ben Whyte]
Also mobile phone companies require you to report your phone lost to the
police which gets recorded as a crime even if you loose it.

Same applies to wallets, credit cards etc.

[Ben]
Not from what I saw; however, criminologists in the UK and the US both
are pointing out that murders are on the rise on your side of the pond,
while property crimes have long been higher than the US. The
conservatives (European ones, anyway) like to point to the influx of
foreigners and the formation of minority gangs. I don't know enough to
say one way or the other, myself.

[Neil]
Just looking back at the Telegraph article, the figures in it show a drop,
followed by a rise. Although it seems to have doubled over a 1 year period,
the rise over 3 years is 50%, still too much, but nothing like the 4 times
increase over a couple of years implied by the original message. The
statistics in the article are:

[Ben]
Some commentators are indeed tying it to disarming the population, and
pointing out that, e.g., New Hampshire - where the average truck driver
carries more firepower than entire EU armies - has a very low crime
and murder rate. Kennesaw county (Georgia) which had (and probably still
does) a mandatory gun possession requirement maintained a zero violent
crime count for many years. The Swiss probably don't do too bad either.

(a) In order to provide for the emergency management of the City, and further
in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare
of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in the City
limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore.

(b) Exempt from the effect of this section are those heads of households who
suffer a physical or mental disability, which would prohibit them from using
such a firearm. Further exempt from the effect of this section are those heads
of households who are paupers or who conscientiously oppose maintaining
firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine, or persons convicted
of a felony.

[Neil]
Well tying British changes in crime rate to disarming the population is
bullshit. The British population has never had much in the way of guns. I
don't think anybody I know has ever owned a more powerful weapon than an air
pistol. (Not quite true, I once knew someone with a crossbow.)

As for the wider issues the correlation between gun ownership and violent
crime just isn't there. You can find examples of high guns, high crime, high
guns, low crime and low guns, low crime. I'm wouldn't expect there to be any
low guns, high gun crime examples out there, but that may depend on what you
are counting. Illegal guns are ususally much harder to count than legal ones
and definitions of what constitutes high gun crime may vary.

[Ben]
There's a bit of circular reasoning in the above... no, you're not going
to have high gun crimes in a society with a low gun count. By the same
exact token, then, you can't tie the number of murders in, say,
Washington DC, to the availability of guns. The US, in places, is a
violent society; guns are certainly not a cause - although they may be
part of the effect.

"Fear no man, no matter what his size
Just call on me and I will equalize"
-- stamped on the first Colt models

[Ben]
Laws only affect the law-abiding.

[Neil]
Even criminals obey a lot of laws and laws may have indirect effects on
criminals. No doubt the NRA would argue that Kennesaw County was an example
of the latter.

[Ben]
By definition, they do not obey the laws which make them into criminals.
A murderer may not have too many traffic tickets - but this does not
make him any less of a murderer.

We all live in societies that allow - in fact, reward - murder when it
is done under the auspices of the government, as warfare. If it is
moral then, why would it be immoral otherwise?... by such a model of
"morality", which has now been trained into thousands of young men and
women by Bush, Blair, and the rest, we've just created a large pool of
people who are restrained from murder by a very thin veneer of
civilization.

As if we hadn't learned enough from Vietnam...

[Sluggo]
Egads, and a neoconservative told me recently, "The protesters think it's
still 1968 and never learned the main lesson of Vietnam: all dissent
STOPS when war is declared."

[Ben]
... well, no, that's not the most stupid thing I've ever heard. I can
think of one that was worse. Two, if I concentrate really hard.

Dissent only exists and makes sense when there's something to dissent
from. Nobody needs to march in the streets and shout for the sun to
shine. And the main lesson of Vietnam was that our politicians are
perfectly willing and fully able to casually murder our young men and
women - as well as those of "the enemy" - based on outright lies, and
are perfectly capable of abandoning them after shoving them into an
inferno. Cam Ranh Bay, WMDs - the lie can change, but the basic facts
remain.

For that matter, I wish it was the late '60s in political terms:

"In his inaugural address, President Richard M. Nixon asked the American
people to lower their voices, to search for unity instead of
divisiveness, for harmony instead of discord. The speech struck a
responsive note in an exhausted nation that had just lived through a
year of violence and turmoil..."
-- Collier's Year Book

[Sluggo]
Funny, I learned a completely different lesson from Vietnam. That is,
"Be suspicious of anything your government is doing."

[Ben]
Odd how you're not the only one who learned that lesson... to my sorrow,
not enough people have learned it, though. Although the current
administration is doing all they can to drive it home.

[Neil]
The source of the increases we have had is probably enormous quantities of
cheap weapons being exported from the the former Soviet Union. Changes in the
law have made no difference that I can see, other than closing down
legitimate shooting clubs, due to public hysteria.

Is London crime worse than New York? Well New York is supposed to have
improved enormously, but there are few areas of London I would feel unsafe
walking in at night. How about New York?

Daytime/nighttime doesn't seem to make much difference. The menace I've
felt is mostly in the daytime; e.g., in Hollywood and south LA you never
know when some tough might appear who wants to mug/gangbang you. London
has that same sense sometimes, or at least parts of it do.

Peaceful chat about fighting

[Sluggo]
... although I'd still list DC as a "safe" place. Never been to
Baltimore.

[Ben]
[laugh] Especially when the two of us ambled down the street, discussing
martial arts and such. Not that DC hasn't seen anything like that
before, but you can pretty much bet that some people were whispering
"ohshit, cops!" and fading into alleys.

[Sluggo]
And you said 'tis nobler to run away than fight, and one should fight
only if the person persues you and leaves you no other choice. That
blew my mind, even though I recognized the martial arts philosophy
behind it. The western (ahem, skinhead) mindset is quite different,
"Fight immediately and never run away."

My philosophy is somewhere between the two.

[Jimmy]
You know my philosophy on this: it's better to make them think they'd
rather not start a fight after all :)

[Ben]
"Listen, we can both walk away from this and go home - dinner,
girlfriends, quiet night's sleep, and so on. The other choice is where
one of us can go to the emergency room or the morgue, and the other one
gets hauled off by the Gardai for inhuman cruelty, vicious mutilation,
and possibly cannibalism. Let's just do the first one instead of ruining
each other's lives, OK?"

[grin] Something like that, Jimmy?

[Jimmy]
Something like that, except it's not so much what I say -- I like to be
more subliminal^Wsubtle than that.

[Sluggo]
Wanna elaborate for the benefit of TAG?

[Jimmy]
Sending conflicting messages with body language is a major part of it --
for example, when someone doesn't want a fight, they put their hands up,
palms open and facing outward to show that they're not a threat. I do
this, but move into a fighting stance. I also keep my hands at throat
height, fingers pointing at the throat -- if I only get one shot, it's
going to count, and I don't mind telegraphing that.

Another aspect is facial expression and voice tone -- with both, I try
to express surprise that someone wants to start a fight with me; my
words say "I'm sure we can work this out" while my face and tone of
voice say "because you really don't want to fuck with me".

I don't want to give away all of my secrets though :) (There's at
least one thing that's hard to explain anyway (I only put the pieces
together a couple of days ago, and even harder to reproduce).

Jimmy's haircut

[Jimmy]
I cut most of my hair off Friday though, and it seems I won't have as
much need to use that set of mind tricks as frequently as I used to.

[Ben]
JPEG! JPEG!

[Sluggo]
Ben's beard is next....

It's about time. Get a haircut and get a job. Do we get to see a pic
of the new Jimmy?

[
See my bio picture, below
]

[Ben]
Ye Ghods. Jimmy, did your son recognize you after, or did he start
crying when the strange-looking man showed up?

[Jimmy]
Nah. He was there while my sister cut my hair. He did let out a startled
gasp when he saw me with my beard cut off though.

[Ben]
Oh, and you're right about the above. Just think about the lovely side
effect, one I try hard to cultivate (with only indifferent success, I'm
afraid) - there are going to be a number of people out there who will
presume that your "corporate lawyer" appearance means that you're
harmless ... It's a nice advantage to have.

You've read my "combat mentality" rap; in fact, I wrote it when you
asked me for details. To be precise, my philosophy is more like "talk
until it's not an option anymore" - where the other person closes off
the option by showing unmistakeable signs of physical aggression - at
which point you take them down as hard as necessary. Running away isn't
an option for me: I'm not much of a runner.

[Jimmy]
Running away mentioned without a pTerry quote?

'Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?'

'Yes, but you see, you can run away from that, too,' said Rincewind.
'That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running
away is for ever.'

'Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero
dies only one.'

'Yes, but it's the important one.'
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Last Continent"

Bobbing for apples, trolling for traffic...

[Rick]
Mike, you wouldn't be trolling for list traffic, would you? ;->

[Sluggo]
Who, me?

[Ben]
You forgot the innocent [blink, blink] tag, Mike. After all, this is
text-mode communication, and the subtler shades of meaning are easily
lost; you wouldn't want people to assume you weren't being sincere...

Guns and Blackmail

[Vince]
I do not like weapons but I live in the country and I must have two weapons...
a 22 cal. Springfield and an H&K 12 gauge shotgun... I do not hunt but from
time to time I have to dispose of an injured or sick animal... as a last
option...

[Ben]
[blink] A 12-ga is a hell of a mercy weapon. I've found that a 22
suffices for anything of that sort; back in the days when I hunted, I
used my Ka-Bar knife when a coup de grace was necessary (only once, as
I recall; I'm quite a good shot.)

[Jimmy]
My guess is the 22 is the mercy weapon, and the shotgun is used to chase
away scavengers - a shotgun is a standard piece of farming equipment over
here too.

[Vince]
BTW none of my weapons are registered... both were bought many years ago...
the Springfield rifle was bought before WWII

[Ben]
Ahem. I presume you realize you've just announced that on a public list?
Not that we have any intention of publishing it... heh, heh, heh...

(I'll contact you later with the Swiss bank account number; you can
transfer the million dollars into it anytime during the next three
days.)

[Vince]
So I placed it on a public list... no biggie... local law enforcement know me
and know my weapons... I mean they were bought before the second world
war...

[Vince]
As for the 12 gauge... I use a one once slug almost exclusively leaves less
to dig a hole for...

[Ben]
[nod] I always wondered about those folks who went deer-hunting during
the shotgun season. Sure, there are such things as sabots, but most of
the ones I'd talked to were just using slugs. What did they do, go
scrape the deer off the trees afterwards and freeze the puree for the
winter?

[Vince]
If you are in a situation of a screwed up bull moose or bear... a 22 don't cut
it... Generally I borrow my neighbors 50 caliber for that...

[Ben]
Nice. Black powder, I presume? I've seen a few firearms that would toss
the modern .50 a few miles, but those are pretty expensive and somewhat
unusual. Sure would stop a moose, though...

Speaking of meese, here's one from Russia - this is the kind of thing
they've got wandering around Siberia and such.

[Vince]
As for the Swiss bank account <heh> glad your doing so well... unfortunately
I just paid my property tax ($6K) and I am broke... and don't expect to get
a landfall of much more than snow.... even my Linux box is made of throw out
parts from several sources...

[Ben]
Yeah, well - those imaginary Swiss accounts are pretty cheap. I can get
you a few hundred of them at a discount, if you want; I know the guy who
thinks'em up.

[Vince]
p.s. did I hear you guys might need proof readers??? I can read but I have
no proof...

[Ben]
I've got no proof either - at least when I'm not hanging out with my
Russian friends. Then, if I get cut, they have to call the fire
department.

[Ben]
Shhh! If you don't say it too loud, nobody will notice. At least I
think that's how this email stuff works, anyway. Besides, I didn't
publish the account number - I put it in a Micr0s0ft Wallet, where it'll
be secure forever and ever! They SAID so!

[John]
Hmm, what's the new name for Carnivore? The FBI should be contacting you
shortly. ;^>

[Vince]
Have you ever sat back and tried to create, hypothetically, a system that
monitors all Internet actions? And all individual actions on the internet?

Let's see... there are a limited amount of Cray computers in this world and..

<HEH>

[Ben]
Heck, that's not the point. Who will watch and decide on the
information presented by those Crays? And, even more importantly, who
will watch them? It's an infinite progression.

[
"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. ... Better than he
was before. Better, stronger, faster."
]

Java should not be trusted with nukes, Microsoft says

[Jason]
I was looking through the Microsoft EULA[1] to see what kind of disclaimer
they had and found pretty much the standard stuff. (ie, "We could use
this software to kill your cat, and it wouldn't be our fault.") But
there was one clause that I found...interesting:

9. NOTE ON JAVA SUPPORT. THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SUPPORT FOR
PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS
NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE
CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE
PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT
NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE
SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA
TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE
PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

Interesting, no?

[1] Specifically, this was the EULA that Midtown Madness, a Microsoft
game, shipped under.

[Jimmy]
Actually, no. This is part of Java's licence. Microsoft licenced Java
from Sun, rather than writing their own implementation, which is why Sun
were able to sue them for making changes to their version of Java.

[Ben]
Amusingly, I wrote an article for Java Developer's Journal a couple
of years ago - "Java Under Linux: Ten Feet Tall and Bullet-Proof" -
that began with the very clause you quote, and made that very point.
Got quite a number of comments about it, too.

[Ben]
Ah. I was just wondering how they measured the length of, e.g., the
Mesozoic era. The above setup makes it trivial: turn it on, and when
it's finished booting - voila! - continental drift and such have
occurred in not only measurable but gross amounts.

[Brian]
Stir in one college age
owner of said box, coat evenly and scream. The gods TRULY are bastards.

[Ben]
And our capacity for self-torture is nearly infinite as well... Perhaps
I am getting a bit wiser as I get older, but I'm becoming rather aware
of the "tar babies" in my life, and am quite emphatic about shedding
them or even avoiding getting involved with them in the first place.
This, of course, presumes the ability to afford such solutions.

[Brian]
I had to come home, compile some software, then use gdb and strace to
try to get it working, just to get rid of the shakes.

Given that we had our tornado in California (anyone else remember the
Mary Avenue touchdown in Sunnyvale, about 4 years ago? Half a block
away!), earthquakes a-plenty, hurricane Isabel last year here on the
right coast ... Volcanos are next on the list, and after working on that
Windows box, I might welcome the change.

[Ben]
I find that hurricanes often suffice to put an end to nasty electronic
creatures that refuse to die in any other way; I've just replaced a
10-year old GPS that sang its swan song (reasons unknown) during the
last one. Oh, my hand-held GPS went along - misery loves company, I
suppose - and so did my iPaq handheld. They say that hurricanes are
necessary because they strip the coating of old, dead organisms off the
coral beds, which allows the coral to breathe and grow; I can assure you
that it strips old electronics off boats just as efficiently.
Presumably, this allows GPS manufacturers to breathe and grow...

[Brad]
Maybe he can scare fate away with a Perl One-Liner that draws an ASCII
monster ;-)

[Brian]
Wasn't there a whole section of Hofstadter's GEB devoted to this?

[Ben]
I need to pick up a copy; it's probably about time. Certain books should
be reread every few years. As an example, I've just reread Pirsig's
ZATAOMM - my fourth reading of it or so - and was struck, again, by
how much that book has influenced my life and attitudes in general since
the first time. More so with the passing years.

[Jimmy]
Yep. That didn't stop me from trying to brush up my C with two versions of a
program to calculate that :)

[Ben]
Heh. Makes sense to play with with the simpler stuff before you dive
into the dark depths of Moria (watch out for that Balrog; he's still
wandering around somewhere down there.)

Now it's shortest. I think. :) It's somewhere around the 18th hole of
Perl golf, anyway.

[Brad]
I wonder if Woomert or Frink would ever alias this in their ~/.bashrc...

[Ben]
Woomert would probably spotted the tortured math stuff and made it even
shorter thereby:

perl -pale'$_=($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3])/20*.7/(1-sin$F[4]/10)'

Other than that, it could happen...

[
Meanwhile, back in the main thread...
]

[Ben]
Acer has replaced my previous lemon^Wlaptop with a newer model,

[Sluggo]
A computer that looks like a lemon... Maybe it'll be the next iMac
design. Bright yellow for lemon, bright green for lime.

[Ben]
Actually, I'd expect it to be "bright yellow for Golden Delicious,
bright green for Granny Smith", if anything. I mean, the company's
called Apple, for Ghu's sake. The last thing they'd want to imply is
that they were selling lemons.

I've actually considered buying an Apple, primarily because of their
history (in my experience and reports from others) of reliability. On
the other hand, I understand that Linux on Macs still has a few rough
edges... and having seen the spindled, folded, and mutilated version of
BSD used by OS/X, I'm not willing to go that way, either.

(Yeccch. It was that much nastier because I actually like BSD.)

[Ben]
an
Aspire 2012... although I'd be hard-put to say anything especially
exciting and wonderful about it. Yeah, the video controller is different
(an RV350/Radeon 9600 instead of the 9200 that was in it previously);
other than that, it's missing the LCD one-line display and the weird
"multimedia" setup that (theoretically) allowed you to play CDs, DVDs,
etc. without actually booting the machine (I've mentioned this; it was a
tiny Linux partition with "mplayer".) [shrug] No loss, AFAIC. On the
other hand, the Intel wireless 2100 interface has been upgraded to a
2200G - which handles A, B, and G, something I do see as an improvement.
They also seem to have resolved the extremely weird "key delay" problem
that the Aspire 2003 had (if you typed too quickly, pressing 'b'
immediately after 'a' would result in a second 'a'!) Otherwise, it looks
and acts much the same as the old gadget.

Let's see how this one holds up...

Recursion

[Ben]
Searching the Net for recursion-related bits in the GEB, I found the
following:

If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer.
Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter
than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
-- Andrew Plotkin

[Jay]
Recursion: see recursion. See also tail recursion.

Tail recursion: see recursion.

[Ben]
Both of the above are listed. :)

[Jay]
Yeah. :-) Where did you find that?

[Ben]
Google for 'Hofstadter GEB recursion', then grab the Wiki entry near the
top of the page. If this fails to satisfy, think of a better set of
search strings and... ooops, sorry, never mind. :)))

Getting the system out of your system

[Kapil]
Failing this of course, you can go run a marathon, climb a mountain,
read a good book, play the flute, prove the Riemann Hypothesis --- in
other words do anything that will get the "need" out of your system.

[Ben]
I like the way you think, Kapil. :) Geeks of the world, untie! [1]

[1] Sure, the dyslexics too. However, they don't need the impetus of
Kapil's options.

Standard

[Thomas]
[1] While awk, perl, etc, reside in /usr/bin, they are not standard or
essential to get a system operating and working. They're simply a
convenience.

[Ben]
Depends on the meaning of 'essential', I suppose. Perl is my OS of
choice; Linux just happens to be the best VM to run it under. :)))

[Jimmy]
Yeah, but I'm trying to get my head around C again, and wanted to juggle
two variables in the for loop to see if I got it right.

[Ben]
Beware the Fencepost Error, son -
The j's that bite, the i's that catch...

Me, I dislike even the idea of loops where you have to keep the index
manually; I think that the concept itself is broken (and yes, it's a
requirement in C, given its data structures - and the right thing to
practice if you're going to be using it.)

[Jason]
I agree; I really think it should be the compiler's job to figure where
something starts and ends, and how we can iterate over each element in
turn. It's not hard. But this is C we're talking about:

> Beware: you could be talking to a minor. Some say that such immoral
> material (C code) should be kept away from the impressionable minds of
> The Children (tm).
That is why, when you mention the C language in front
of a child, you should spell the name...
-- Hal E. Fulton on comp.lang.ruby

:-)

[Ben]
This may or may not be
indicative, but I haven't used a loop of the above type - even though
Perl supports it - ever since I learned Perl, except to explain them
(and deprecate their use) to my students. If I had to use it for some
reason, I'd at least let the compiler handle the exit condition:

for (i=6; i;) in[i] = atoi(argv[i--]);

[Jason]
Just looking at this, I can't figure out what it's supposed to do. What
is the value of "i" when used as "in[i]"? Does it get the old value of
"i" or the new value? I think it's undefined how C should handle this.
At least gcc doesn't like it:

[Ben]
[shrug] "-Wall" is a maiden aunt on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
IMO, most of what it complains about never comes to pass.

That's not to
say that it's not useful at times, but paying scrupulous attention to
every one of its hysterical pronouncements of doom isn't a good
strategy. As an example, I've never seen a kernel compile that didn't
generate a stack of warnings - and yet, all but one or two worked fine.

[Jason]
Or, for that matter, compiling almost any large software project seems
to generate a pile of warnings. And, yes, most of the time, everything
works fine.

[Brad]
I use -Wall because I can't stand streams of silly warnings; they
force me to write better code and more maintainable code. This, IMO,
is a Good Thing.

[Ben]
Oh, I'm all for enabling warnings - I don't write Perl code (other than
Perl Golf) without "-w" or "use warnings", and anything over 10 lines
gets "use strict" as well. I just think that "-Wall" goes way
overboard... but I guess it's more of a response to the way that C
itself is rather than twitchiness on the part of the developers.
Whenever blowing your nose has a perceptible chance of destroying the
entire Universe, a bit of reticence becomes understandable.

Whups, 'ccmakedep' snuck in where only compilers belong. Otherwise,
seems like none of them had a problem - and the program output was
exactly the same in all cases.

[Jason]
When I said "different compiler", I had in mind non-gcc based compilers.
So, just to see what a different compiler would do, I downloaded tcc and compiled the program.
Exactly the same output as gcc. Hmmm.

So, I'll change my assertion from "the minute" to "five years into a
project, after you've ported it to 10 platforms, you're probably going
to get different results." :-)

[Ben]
[grin] Sounds reasonable.

[Jason]
But seriously, I think that if you're using C, you should avoid that
type of construct, because you don't know how the compiler is going to
define it. You can find out how this compiler defines it, and maybe
all the compilers you use do it the same way. But maybe it will change
in the new version; maybe you need to use a different compiler.

Coding in C is like playing with fire. You do one thing wrong, and BAM!
Segfault, or worse, obscure bug, or worse yet, undetected security hole.
I think using a construct whose behavior is undefined makes it more
likely that you'll get "one thing wrong".

Just my 2 cents.

[Ben]
Oh, I agree. It's why I avoid coding in C anymore; haven't done it for
years now. I've come to believe that the terms "fragile" and
"programming" shouldn't be allowed near each other, whereas C plans the
wedding, sends out the invitations, and writes the piranha-infested
prenuptial agreement.

[Jason]
Heh heh, I keep forgetting that the best possible C coding practice is
"Don't".

[Ben]
On the other hand, I won't be writing any device drivers in Perl.
(Contrariwise, one of my former students designed a website back-end
database that uses "grep" plus an odd directory structure, and it turned
out to be consistently faster than MySQL. Go figure.)

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free"

Paul Simon, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"

[Brian]

I can't let you inject THAT song into my brain, turning what little
is left into gibbermushingfrooms without appropriate revenge:

In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire.
With his long wooden pipe,
fuzzy, woolly toes,
he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

on and on, ad nauseum. Take that! At least it wasn't the Carpenters...
AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

[Jimmy]
Close to yo-ou

[Ben]
Ah - ear worms. Be glad that no one has invoked the Barney Song; that
one trumps all, and requires a large drill press and a long sharp
extractor bit to remove from the sufferer's head.

[Brad]

do {
"This is the song that never ends,
It goes on and on my friends!
Someone started singing it not knowing what it was,
and they'll continue singing it forever just because,"
}
while (1);

[Ben]

- "You can write a Perl script to do anything."
- "Hah! I'd like to see you write a Perl program to cut down a Redwood with
a banana!"
- "Easy."

1 while 'banana'; # wait for the tree to rot and fall over

-- several of the wizards in C.L.P.M.

I suspect that your version would cause it to rot and die much faster.

[Breen]
There are advantages to not being a TV-watcher. I've managed not ever
to have heard that tune.

I plan to keep it that way, too...

[Jimmy]
You lucky bastard. That's one of the biggest disadvantages of being a
parent -- the rubbish that kids watch [1]. Most recently, I told my son
I'd take him to the cinema and regretted it -- I thought he'd want to
see "Shark Tale", but instead he made me sit through "YuGiOh - The
Movie" (a movie based around a lesser Magic: The Gathering clone with
dialogue that serves only to explain the game and the properties of each
card).

[Jimmy]
My son has become a mini-Linux advocate since he found out that it was
used to make the Harry Potter films :)

[Jimmy]
[1] Though obviously not the programmes I watched when I was a kid -- we
had quality TV in my day[2].

[Brian]
I've a number of friends who assure me that Shark Tale is quite good. At
least one such, sadly unburdened by rug rats, still has gone to see it
at least three times.

[Jimmy]
Yeah. Both Pixar and Dreamworks have made some great computer animated
films. "Finding Nemo" is probably the best of the bunch. "Toy Story" was
great, but it'll forever be marred for me, because of the guy who was
sitting in the same row as my then-girlfriend and me who was enjoying it
a bit too much.

[Jason]
I don't know about the rest of you, but whenever I see a CG movie, I
can't help thinking things like: "Wow! Look how good they did the
water!" or "Haha! It's just a flat textured surface!"

[Brian]
I've assured him that the next time I go to see a cartoon in the movies,
it'll be an hour plus of collected Wylie Coyote shorts. Effectively that
means never, as there are too many non-PC references, making Warner's
lawyers alternate between quivering in fear and salivating at the
prospective fees, win or lose.

[Jimmy]
Most, if not all, of them are available on VHS, so that + TV tuner card
+ DVD burner + issue83/stoddard.html
= Wile E. Coyote, the collected works.

[Jimmy]
[2] I'm too young to be using phrases like "in my day" -- another
disadvantage.

[Brian]
You're NEVER too young to use the phrase "in my day". For instance, in
the third grade, when your brother is coming into first grade for his
first day, this is appropriate: "In my day, they used to glue your
thingy closed if you asked to go to the bathroom too many times. You'll
be fine, I"m sure..." I think he's blocked out the memory of that day.

[Jimmy]
Good point. My youngest sister started Secondary school this year and
had to be briefed on the various things my brothers and I did so she
wouldn't be surprised about the extra surveillance.

[Brian]
There are times, however, when it's not prudent: At the birth of your
daughter's first child, "In my day we just screamed a few times, popped
the babies out, and went back to work in the fields." Remember that
she's lying in an OR setting with plenty of sharp instruments around.

[Jimmy]
Heh. Reminds me of when my son was born - I was, until then, blissfully
unaware of such things as vacuum deliveries or episiotomies and in the
hour-long seconds when my newly delivered little boy spent showing no
signs of life I had measured the distances between me, nearest sharp
object, and doctor's throat.

[Brian]
Then there's the "In my day" sayings that refer to times that should be
forever forgotten: "In my day we wore white polyester and vinyl, and we
were happy to do so." Statements like that are conversation killers.

[Jimmy]
Erm... yes.

/me slowly backs away.

[Brian]
.brian (who remembers to add the X-Gazette-Tag about 50% of the time)

[Jimmy]
I think we're off-topic enough for that to not matter :)

[
Earlier in this thread...
]

[Ben]
or, since this is a "single-use" loop (as I recall it) -

int i = 6;
while (i) in[i] = atoi(argv[i--]);

[Jason]
Essentially the same loop as before, so the same problem. I'm not 100%
sure that the C standard says it's undefined, but at the very least, it
strikes me as not the best coding style for C.

[Ben]
[grin] Oh, certainly not. It's just me and my prejudices.

[Jason]
Oh! Do you mean, that because of our different (programming) language
background, we would of course code in C using styles from the other
language that we are most familiar?

[Ben]
Computers are supposed to work hard so we don't have to, dammit.

[Jason]
C is not my "first language", so I don't try to take too many shortcuts,
for fear of getting lost. For instance:

It doesn't really make sense to say that in C ever because true is
basically defined as "not zero". And yet I say it anyway, because I
always have to think twice whenever I see

if(variable)
do_stuff();

<shrug> It's a style issue. I don't think correct behavior should be a
side-effect.

[Ben]
Heh. No, it's supposed to be a language-enforced feature, in something
supposedly as clearly-defined as C. In practice, well, that's a
different story.

[Brad]
As you said, it's a CodingStyle thing, but I find that "when in doubt,
use prefix". It tends to help when you SIGSEGV in a loop and can't
figure out why ;)

[Jason]
Yeah, I try to use the prefix form as much as I can. When I want
strange side effects, I'll ask for it, thankyouverymuch. :)

[Ben]
Yup. "When in doubt, write it out" is not a bad strategy for avoiding a
certain class of problems in C coding. This, of course, is
self-defeating to a degree - more lines means more debugging and
increases the chance of a typo - but that's what "lint", "-Wall" and so
on are for.

TAG Lottery

[Kapil]
I know this is linux-questions-only and so on but here goes:

[Sluggo]
It's just a question of whether you win the TAG lottery. Answering
questions gives you good karma, which makes it more likely you can ask
a Windows question without getting flamed.

Procmail

[Jay]
Yeah. Gmail massages the reply-to on outgoing mail to force a carbon
to the sender, and puts that first, screwing up my mutt save-file.

I wish they'd add it at the end.

[Ben]
You could always "mung it back to normal" in your ~/.procmailrc.
Shouldn't be too hard, I'd think.

[Jay]
If I were running procmail. :-}

[Ben]
Well, yes, you would have to purchase this expensive piece of
software, wait for it to be shipped to you, agree to the shrink-wrap
EULA, attach the special enabler dongle to your serial port, get the
coded, limited-time key from the vendor after paying the per-seat fee,
spend several years configuring the incredibly complex operation of
it, perhaps buy a new computer because the current one isn't powerful
enough... it is quite the hassle, I understand. :/

[Jay]
Well, clearly that was sarcasm.

Except for the "incredibly complex ... configuration" part. :-)

But that does entail mindreading, and I so hate that.

[Ben]
Nah, no mindreading necessary. Installing a single package fits, without
any odd corners sticking out, into "Shouldn't be too hard, I'd think."

[Jay]
No, my point was that there are sometimes good reasons to put an
added reply-to first: TAG ourselves, for example.

But gmail's reasons aren't good. IMHO.

[Kapil]
As far as I can see, this is one of those "active developer/backward
compatability" (AD/BC) issues. The AD wanting to move to GUI (yes, it
was a while ago but we CLI types don't die easy :)) Unfortunately,
when the "shell" was designed it was assumed (ah-ha!) that no one would
run programs (except daemons) other than from the command-line or from
other running programs and so on recursively (*).

(*) Hofstader-ise that one.

[Ben]
Naw, a recursive statement of a recursive problem is beautiful just as
it is. Why spoil a good thing? :)

English words appearing in the 20th century

[Jimmy]
Not quite - the list has "awesome", "hip", "acid", and "cool", which
definitely existed before the 20th century. The article picks words that
sum up something about the year (miniskirt in 1965, 9/11 in 2001), or
that were used in their current sense long before most would guess (hip
in 1904, pop in 1921).

Post-hurricane news

[Ben]
FYI, folks - I'm alive and well. Don't know about the boat yet - I've
spent the hurricane over at a friends' house. I'll see what's up
tomorrow, but I'm assuming it's all good; I've got good anchors, and the
winds in St. Augustine shouldn't have gone much above hurricane force,
if at all.

[Ben]
Two people have been reported dead, so far - one of them from alcohol
poisoning during a hurricane party. Just wanted to reassure everyone
that it's not me, despite the amount of vodka consumed in this house in
the past day (yep, these friends are Russian. :)

Jimmy is a single father of one, who enjoys long walks... Oh, right.

Jimmy has been using computers from the tender age of seven, when his father
inherited an Amstrad PCW8256. After a few brief flirtations with an Atari ST
and numerous versions of DOS and Windows, Jimmy was introduced to Linux in 1998
and hasn't looked back.

In his spare time, Jimmy likes to play guitar and read: not at the same time,
but the picks make handy bookmarks.